Diversity of Sacrifice: Form and Function of Sacrificial Practices in the Ancient World and Beyond by Carrie Ann Murray

Author:Carrie Ann Murray
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2016-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 7.1 Detail of Athenian black-figure band-cup. c. 550 B.C.E. Niarchos Collection A 031. Drawing by D. Weiss, after Laxander 2000: pl. 1.

As a result of this select historiography, one issue becomes pretty clear: one person’s sacrifice is another’s procession; or, one person’s hieroscopy is another person’s post-kill. The structure (or structures) imposed on this single “daily life” ritual, known as sacrifice, especially where decorated vases are concerned, has been presented with a view to illustrating an activity or a series of related ones, and as documents of ancient Greek religion (i.e., the stages of the sacrificial process) often without careful regard for technique, place of manufacture, artist, artistic convention, or archaeological context (Webster 1969:74–96). To focus briefly on one of these—the artist—it should be emphasized that many of our better known vase painters include sacrificial iconography among their repertoire of scenes, among them the black-figure painters: Lydos, the Amasis Painter, Elbows Out, Swing Painter, the Antimenes, Gela and Theseus Painters; and the red-figure painters: Eucharides, Brygos Painter, Nikosthenes, Polygnotos, Pan, Makron, Oltos, Douris, and the Meidias Painter (Boardman 2001). There is even some evidence to suggest that a few of these painters “specialized” in sacrificial images and should be assessed for their greater contribution to religious iconography in general (Boardman 1989:221; Borgers 1999:88; Hatzivassiliou 2010:48–51).

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